


A Nice and Accurate Lesbian Herstory Archive

by badwig



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A soft epilogue for Sarah Bernhardt's poor dead alligator, F/F, Genderswap, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-07-19 01:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19965619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwig/pseuds/badwig
Summary: 6000 years of dyke drama.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The section titled 'Soho, London, 1800' will make more sense if you read this first: https://dykeiel.tumblr.com/post/185109464777/this-has-the-scene-where-crowley-brings-chocolates

**In the Beginning**

The angel of the Eastern Gate was fretting. The air pressure had dropped. Her wings ached.

“I’m sorry,” she said politely. “What was it you were saying?” 

“I _said_ , was it just me, or did you find that all slightly dodgy?” said the serpent, whose name was Crawly, though she was thinking of changing it. “I mean, you must admit, apportioning of blame was a bit...” Here the serpent contrived, occultly, to convey the impression of a wobbly hand gesture. Then she had a thought, and suddenly her place on the Garden wall was taken by a woman with eerie serpentine eyes - slit-pupiled, near-unblinking, the large irises a murky phosphorescent yellow - and hair that she was also thinking of changing. 

The angel, whose name was Aziraphale, seemed to barely notice this. “Oh, I’m _sure_ it wasn’t,” she said, the fretting now audible. 

“I’m just saying, seemed like an overreaction. And anyway, I can’t see what’s so bad about it, knowing the difference between good and evil. Or having a, you know, imaginative heart or whatever.” 

“Well, it must _be_ bad, or else _you_ wouldn’t have been involved. Basic nature and all that,” said Aziraphale.

She sounded just half-hearted enough that Crawly began to warm to her theme. “And really, why make such a fuss about the tree if you’re going to _make such a fuss about the tree_? Put it on a mountain or something, don’t call their attention to it. Feels like a confidence trick.” 

Aziraphale looked perturbed. “Best not to second-guess ineffability, I find. There’s Right and there’s Wrong.”

“Exactly!” said Crawly.

Aziraphale frowned, not saying anything. They stood in silence for a while, feeling the air grow heavier.

“Didn’t you used to have a flaming sword?” said Crawly eventually.

“Er,” said Aziraphale.

“You did, didn’t you? Flamed like anything. Looked very impressive, I thought.”

“Er, well…”

“Lost it, have you?”

“Not lost, no.” 

There was a pause, during which Crawly peered at Aziraphale, who was squinting at something in the desert outside the Garden, lips pursed. Finally she looked at Crawly, seeming to only now fully register that she’d stopped being a snake. She did this over the course of several protracted glances, looking faintly reproachful. Crawly raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Not lost?” she prompted.

Aziraphale sighed. “If you must know,” she said, looking, sounding, and feeling extremely vexed, “I gave it away.”

Crawly was grinning, wide-eyed. “You _what_?”

“I gave it to her! I _had_ to. She’s expecting _already_ , poor thing, and they both looked so cold, and there are _vicious_ animals out there, and a storm coming in. And, well,” she glanced around, and then up, and then continued more quietly, " _he's_ gone a bit…” She did a wobbly hand gesture, somewhat stiffly. “So I just said, look, if you come back here there’s going to be an almighty row, but you might be needing this sword, so just do me a favour and, you know, make haste, and don't let your young man give you any guff.” She gave Crawly a small, worried smile. “That wasn't the Wrong thing, was it?”

“It _can't_ have been, what with basic nature,” said Crawly, sounding slightly snide, though the corners of her mouth kept quirking up without her permission. She looked like she was fighting the urge to offer to buy Aziraphale a drink.

“Oh, _thank_ you,” said Aziraphale, missing the tone and smiling brilliantly back at her. “It’s been worrying me all afternoon.”

After a moment, Crawly said vexedly, “I think _I_ might’ve done the Right thing, actually. Be funny if we’d swapped, wouldn’t it?”

Aziraphale looked at her in alarm. “It decidedly would _not_.”

Crawly shrugged. “Yeah, s’pose not.” A pause. “Did she say anything about it all? Eve, I mean.”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale. “Seemed a bit ambivalent.” Crawly nodded, did a ‘fair enough’ face. They both looked into the distance at Eve, who was making a fairly good go of the sword with some lionesses. Adam was watching with his arms crossed. 

“I miss Lilith,” said Crawly. "She'd have been helping."

“Quite,” said Aziraphale absently, before catching herself and staring at Crawly in horror. “Obviously I didn’t mean...!” 

Crawly was grinning again, wider now. “You did, a bit. Oh, relax, angel, I won’t tell on you.” 

Aziraphale gave her another worried little smile. Then the sky, which had for some time been growing greyer and greyer, opened. The cattle and the beasts of the earth and the creeping things all sought shelter from the first storm. Aziraphale put up one great gleaming white wing and Crawly stepped closer to huddle under it. 

**Mytilene, Lesbos, 602 BCE**

They were on a beach. It was a little before dusk. Aziraphale had a poet on her lap. She was reciting, or maybe composing, and Aziraphale was feeding her pomegranate seeds during the pauses, plucking them deftly from the flesh one by one. _This is the Garden all over again_ , Crowley thought, with some venom. She wasn’t being _weird_ , there were other people there, though admittedly she was the only one sitting on her own, and the only one glowering. Earlier in the afternoon whatsername had been singing at them all, but by now it had descended into decidedly one-on-one murmuring. Crowley could still hear her quite clearly; just now she was saying something fairly wanky about grass. If she really focused she could distinctly make out the quick plucking rasp of teeth against plump angelic fingertips. Whatsername was a bit bitey, apparently. _At_ _least she's put the bloody lyre away_ , Crowley thought. She was giving serious consideration to finding a grotto somewhere and taking a three-week nap. 

And then a bead of pomegranate juice welled on Aziraphale's already well-stained fingertip and ran down, and whatsername smirked and caught hold of Aziraphale's wrist and took two of her fingers into her mouth to suck them clean. _Nope_ , thought Crowley, crisply. _Nup._ She sat up straight and concentrated. _I could spread a bit of foment_ , she thought, _have her exiled._ She mulled it over, dismissed it as unimaginative. Then it came to her. She closed her eyes and pictured crumbling papyrus, and generations of scribes skiving off for the afternoon instead of copying out a load of slightly lechy Aeolic, and then, much later, generations of scholars coming near to blows over the proper translation of "παῖς", or being driven to distraction wondering what on Earth the Tenth Muse might have been saying about celery. A few centuries from now, someone in Pergamon was going to have a very bright idea about something called a codex, and whatsername was going to be a casualty of progress. Crowley smiled. It was a bit long-term, admittedly, but she'd never minded that. When she opened her eyes she saw that Aziraphale had run out of pomegranate seeds. 

**Rome, 41 CE**

Petronius' new restaurant was hot, and loud, and dingy, and so crowded they’d had to do a bit of miraculous queue-jumping to get in at all, followed immediately by a bit of miraculous table-getting. They were in a relatively calm, quiet corner, but only relatively. Crowley could smell sulphur, faintly, and hoped it was her imagination and not some volcanic harbinger. Their order had just arrived, and she was getting cold feet. 

“Since you haven’t had them before,” Aziraphale had said as she pulled out Crowley’s chair, “I thought we should start with a classic,” and Crowley had tried for an insouciant shrug, not really knowing what constituted a classic oyster. Apparently it was a dozen of them, raw, shells halved, laid out prettily in concentric circles. They were still but clearly alive, delicate curls of sleek clean muscle gleaming with brine. Aziraphale picked one up, and with the other hand took a small silver knife off the table. “They leave the muscle attached here,” she said approvingly. She drew the flat of the blunt blade gently over the oyster. It twitched.

Crowley tried not to sound alarmed. “Is that not a bit…?”

“What?”

“...cruel?”

“Oh, they don’t feel it,” Aziraphale said brightly. "So, here, watch me.” She crooked the knife under the flesh of the oyster and slid it back and forth until it lifted from the shell. “Like so. And do you see the liquor here?” She pointed. Crowley did. Some of it had got on Aziraphale’s hands. “That’s important, that’s half the taste.” Crowley nodded. "So all you do next is tip it onto your tongue and hold it there for a moment. But do bite a little: a lot of people swallow them whole, but I find that if you use your teeth just gently there’s a wonderful burst of juices.”

“Blergh,” said Crowley, with feeling.

Aziraphale wasn’t paying attention. She had brought the oyster to her lips. Her head was tipped back a little and when Crowley looked closely at her neck she could just see the gentle flicker of her pulse. She tipped the oyster into her mouth and held it. Crowley saw a quick flash of her teeth, and then she let it slide slowly over her tongue. Her eyelids fluttered. Crowley felt her nails digging into her palm and dug them in harder. Then Aziraphale was looking at her again, smiling. She had liquor on her lips. They’d gone a bit red. She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at them fussily, and then wiped her chin, slightly less so. 

“These are excellent,” she said. “From Lucrino, if I’m not mistaken.” She picked up another one, and the knife. “Here you go,” she said, holding them up for Crowley to take. When she didn’t, Aziraphale gave her an encouraging look. “Go on. You’ll like them, I promise.” The oyster had a sharp clean brackish smell. Crowley felt a quick slight tug of pain under her tongue and realised her mouth was watering. She swallowed. The noise in the restaurant was hurting her skin somehow, and the air was so thick and hot she’d stopped even trying to breathe it. She thought she might actually be slightly feverish, which was disconcerting on a personal level but interesting from a medico-theological standpoint. 

"Er," she said. She was weighing the merits of pretending to suddenly remember an appointment with a senator. 

Aziraphale’s encouraging look was now edging decidedly toward solicitous alarm. “Are you all right?” she asked. She put the knife and the oyster down, gently.

Crowley hoped very badly she wasn’t about to say three words at once with all the vowels missing. “Fine, yeah,” she managed. “Just. I’m not really hungry? I never properly got the hang of the food thing, to be honest.”

Aziraphale took a second with this. “So you don’t eat?” she asked. 

“Not really,” said Crowley. “I mean, I was quite into dormice for a bit, but just on sort of a banquet-to-banquet basis.”

Aziraphale was too polite to ask the obvious question. "Hm," she said. She was looking at the oysters, crestfallen. 

“Listen,” said Crowley, “don’t let me stop you.”

“Oh no, that would be terribly rude. Besides, it’s far too much for one person. A little much for two people, really. Which I know we aren’t, technically, but still.”

"It's fine. Don't worry, really," said Crowley, but Aziraphale remained resolutely worried. Crowley leaned in a bit. “Go on,” she said, Edenically _._

Aziraphale didn't immediately fall on them ravenously, like she'd been slightly hoping. She smiled nervously and deliberated for a few more seconds before carefully reaching for the one Crowley had just refused. Crowley put her elbows on the table, let herself slouch forward, settled in to watch Aziraphale take her time with the remaining eleven oysters, answering several questions toward which absolutely no theological man hours had been put. 

**St. Tryphon’s Priory, Kingdom of Northumbria, 803 CE**

Crowley hitched up her skirts, lifted one knee, and then carefully tapped just the toe of her shoe over the threshold onto the library floor, thinking it would _probably_ be fine. It was. The library was empty but for Aziraphale, who was, as anticipated, playing hooky from vespers. She walked in, quietly and then slightly stompier as Aziraphale failed to look up from her book. She loomed over her desk for a bit, to no avail, then drummed her fingernails on it. Nothing. Then she had a thought. She walked up behind the desk, took off her sunglasses, and tried to ease them stealthily onto Aziraphale’s face. At first she got so little reaction she thought she’d just have to leave them there and wait it out, but when they settled properly onto the bridge of Aziraphale's nose she jumped spectacularly and turned around to glare at Crowley, who was regretting the whole thing and fighting the urge to miracle herself a replacement pair. "Be not afraid," Crowley said, deadpan-ish. "It's only me."

“I suppose you think you’re very funny,” Aziraphale said. Ostensibly she meant the bit with the glasses, but her eyes were flickering over Crowley’s dress. It was black, unlike Aziraphale in her austere white wool, but admittedly somewhat longer, looser and more, er, scapulary than her usual. Crowley had walked back around to lean on the desk with her palms. She smirked and shrugged, put her sunglasses on when Aziraphale handed them back. 

“It’s _weird_ seeing you in a dress,” she said, and then immediately wished she hadn't. 

“It’s not a _dress_ ,” said Aziraphale testily.

“Yeah, sorry - ” 

“Don’t say ‘force of habit’.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

“Yeah, all right, I was.” A pause. “So, how’s the nunnery treating you?” She leaned in, lowered her voice a little. “Do they still make you put covers on the baths so God can’t see in?” Her eyebrows didn’t waggle, but it was a near thing.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Aziraphale primly. After a moment’s thought she added, “Might you forbear from telling me why you do?”

Crowley forbore, though in fact it was because she’d once gotten spectacularly but very chastely drunk with an ex-anchoress.

Then there was a pause, during which Aziraphale looked at her expectantly. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re here?” she said eventually.

“Wanted to borrow a book.”

" _Really_?"

" _No_ , angel. I wouldn't do that to you. It's news, actually.” Aziraphale did a ‘do tell’ gesture. “Right. So. I’ve sort of been hanging around with some people from, er. Up north.”

“Picts?”

“Mm, bit further. Bit more, um, Norse.” Aziraphale did her exasperated face. One of her exasperated faces. “Yeah, well," Crowley said, a little sheepish, "they’re quite good fun, generally. But.”

“But?”

“They’ve got a bit of, er, viking planned for this place. For about six weeks from now, which is more notice than they usually give, so you should be quite pleased, really. Just thought I’d give you a heads-up - ”

“A what?”

“ - so you could, you know, clear everyone out, get this lot in storage. Flaming sword mightn’t go amiss, either, if you can track it down.” 

Aziraphale was looking at her, not saying anything, brow furrowed.

“Also,” she said after a bit, beginning to get slightly jittery under Aziraphale's divine scrutiny, “I’ve, erm. I think I might’ve brought you a present?” She wasn't especially pleased about it. Neither, it seemed, was Aziraphale. She was still frowning. “D’you remember that guy who was always trying to get hold of your ‘Bilgamesh’ tablets?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale nodded warily, like she thought Crowley might be about to brandish his mummified head. “Did you see he had a bit of a kvetch about you? Look.” She drew a small tablet out of a pouch at her waist not quite big enough to have carried it.

Aziraphale let out a soft surprised laugh and took the tablet from her. “Where on Earth did you find this?” she asked.

“Cave,” Crowley said. “I was napping." This was true-ish: she'd cheated a bit, though the tablet was real.

Aziraphale was running her fingertips over the carvings. "Oh," she said, pleased, "he's spelt my name right.”

“In cuneiform?”

“I always know. Gosh, he was cross, wasn’t he? Oh, and _you’re_ in here, too.”

“Read it out,” said Crowley. She liked hearing Aziraphale read.

Aziraphale cleared her throat and began:

" _This is a warning to the businessmen of Uruk:_

_Do not employ the services of the scribe Aziraphale. She is a spiteful and dishonest woman. I offered her a fair price for her tablets relating the tale of Bilgamesh and Enkidu, and was refused. Three times I returned to her place of business to repeat my offer, and each time it was closed. On the first I saw the door shut as I approached, on the second I was greeted by a stench that stung my eyes with its foulness, and on the third I was forced to retreat as there was a serpent coiled at the entrance. Stay away!”_

She looked up at Crowley, a little abashed but also distinctly twinkly-eyed. _Oh, fuck,_ thought Crowley, _she's about to do the eyelash thing,_ and then she did. Crowley tried valiantly not to make a melty face.

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “he wanted them copied out, and I offered to do it for him, because you know what people are like, but he said his scribes would do a better job.”

“Dickhead.”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale, forgetting to reprimand her, about which she was frankly slightly miffed.

“So, do you, um. Like it?” Crowley asked. “I mean, you’re not offended or anything?"

Aziraphale managed to meet her eye through the sunglasses. She had on that smile that made her mouth go all small. “Crowley, you can see I like it.”

“Yeah? Well, er. Good. Yeah.”

“I’m going to put it with the Bilgamesh ones - I’ve still got them somewhere,” Aziraphale said, and then placed the tablet carefully on her desk. After a moment she looked Crowley in the eye again. “Thank you for this. The ‘heads-up’, I mean. You didn’t have to, they’re nothing to do with your lot. And it would’ve been just awful, you know it would.” Crowley flapped her hand dismissively, but Aziraphale didn’t waver. “It was good of you,” she said.

Crowley scowled. "Don't be earnest at me, angel, it gives me a sinus headache," she said. Aziraphale gave her a look, but seemed ready to drop the subject. After a few seconds she stood from her desk and started painstakingly rolling up her sleeves. "Are we going to arm-wrestle?" Crowley asked. 

Aziraphale ignored her. She’d gone businesslike. "I'm going to start getting on with it all, if you don't mind," she said, looking around at the books.

"No, yeah, I'll leave you to it," Crowley said, then winced when she realised she'd been addressing Aziraphale's forearms. Then it properly dawned on her that she was being politely dismissed, and for a second she had a cliff-jump urge to offer to stay and help. But she clenched her teeth against it and tried for a rakish expression. "Might pop in and see about the baths on my way out," she said, and drew great comfort and joy from Aziraphale's answering moue.

**Rouen, France, 1431**

Aziraphale had her Guardian of the Eastern Gate face on. “You’re not staging some sort of _jailbreak_ , Crowley,” she said. “It simply isn’t happening. She’s a martyr. It’s the Plan.”

“She’s _nineteen_ ,” said Crowley. 

“Don’t act as if this is you being _nice_. This is sabotage. I thought we weren’t bothering with all that.”

“We _aren’t_. It isn't. Sabotage, or nice, or anything." 

Aziraphale raised her eyebrows. "What is it, then? My _dear._ "

Crowley mentally filled in 'You _serpent'_ , and wanted to punch her. She also wanted her to tell her how brave and good and noble she was being, and maybe present her with some knightly favour. Probably a handkerchief, if she was being realistic. She ground her teeth. "I dunno. I like her."

Aziraphale's nostrils flared. “Oh, bugger off, you don’t _like_ her. She couldn’t more be one of ours.” 

“Yeah? They're going to excommunicate her, you watch."

Aziraphale looked as if she might be poised for some actual smiting. “Crowley, if I find out you’ve so much as sneaked her an extra blanket, that’s the end of our Arrangement, I swear it.”

Crowley scowled at her, deliberating. Or pretending to, and being furious with herself and Aziraphale both because she'd known who she'd pick since before they'd even started arguing. “Fine,” she said eventually.

“What?” said Aziraphale, sounding slightly panicked.

“Fine, I’ll leave her in there, let them get on with it. I can’t _believe_ you sometimes.”

Aziraphale seemed unnerved. “Well. Good. Thank you,” she said. Her eyes flicked down to Crowley’s right hand, and Crowley realised she had her fist clenched so hard the knuckles bulged gruesomely sharp. She flexed her fingers. “You know,” said Aziraphale, sounding placatory, “it’s not so bad, smoke inhalation.”

Crowley’s eyes widened. “For G- is there something the matter with you?” 

“I was just trying to…”

“Look, believe me, I know all about it.” 

Aziraphale flinched, and then seemed to try and fail to think of something to say. She was holding her shoulders very straight, face soft and lost with the divine wrath gone out of it. “If I go, you won’t just immediately, you know...” she said after a little while, gesturing at the tower behind them. Crowley shook her head and Aziraphale seemed to accept it. As she walked away Crowley felt a pang at how delicate and odd she seemed suddenly, small in the shadow of the grim squat grey tower, with dark mud flecking her hose and the hem of her ridiculous white houppelande. It wasn't new, this pang. It was fondness so deep and helpless it rose in her throat like rage. She wanted to catch up to Aziraphale, dig her fingers hard into her broad round shoulders, bully her into helping smuggle the poor girl out. She didn't. She walked off in the opposite direction, though they'd come from the same place.

**Soho, London, 1800**

“You’re welcome, by the way,” said Crowley. She was watching Aziraphale make her way steadily through the chocolates, which she'd popped back to the shop to drop off.

“Oh no, did I not say? Thank you, they're lovely."

"Not for them," Crowley said. She was tipsy. 

"Then what?" asked Aziraphale. 

Crowley realised she had been about to rather show her hand. She improvised. "The books."

“The _books_?”

“I invented them. Well, I did the... what were they, the ones just before?”

“Codices?”

“Yep. You were a big fan, as I recall.”

“You did not.”

“I did.”

"I can tell when you’re fibbing, Crowley.”

“You can’t.”

“I _can_.” She peered into Crowley’s face. Crowley peered back. “Good lord,” she said after several seconds. “You did, didn’t you? Why?”

“They’re very convenient if you’re after a bit of en-masse tempting. You’d know, you’re always getting in a huff about all the burnings.” 

“Sorry, you _write_?”

“'Course not. I just, you know, provided a platform. Nice durable, portable one. You were there when I came up with it, actually."

"I was?"

"D'you remember Lesbos?" Aziraphale nodded, looking slightly wistful. "It was there. You had whatsername draped all over you, whispering, and it was all fairly raunchy, you must admit, and I thought, _I could mass-produce this._ Works for the other sins, too. Most of them, anyway."

Aziraphale was quiet. She picked up a truffle, chewed it contemplatively. After a minute or so she said, “You understand I’m giving serious thought to just not believing you?”

Crowley nodded. “Fair.” 

“But,” Aziraphale went on, “if any of this is at all true, well, my dear, despite your, er, stated intent, surely you can see that you’ve really done quite a spectacular kindness for my side. For the world, really. And for me personally, of course. You've given me a very grand gift."

Crowley didn't know what to say. Some of it was a little bit true. Her face felt warm. Aziraphale had been sort of twinkly and smug at the start of her little pronouncement, but by the end she'd gone soft-eyed, earnest. "Here," she said after a moment, proffering the chocolate box, which was empty but for a diablotin that Crowley knew she had been saving, “have the last one."

Crowley's hand went up instinctively, but then she clenched her fist and held it against her thigh. “Don’t want it,” she said, aiming for dismissive and hitting sullen.

"As you like," said Aziraphale, but she left the box on Crowley's side of the table.

**Paris, 1899**

"This is grim. I mean, this is really grim. Can you think of anything grimmer than a dead alligator in a bath?"

"Awfully big bath," Aziraphale said, having fairly recently mastered the rhetorical question. 

Crowley was crouched beside the bath, which was not so big that it could accommodate the alligator's tail or back legs. It looked like the aftermath of some sort of freak diving accident. “He was still a baby, practically,” she said. 

“Awfully big baby,” said Aziraphale.

“She was giving him champagne and milk, that’s why he’s…” Crowley gestured. “As if champagne _or_ milk wouldn’t have already been bonkers.”

“What was his name again?” Aziraphale asked.

"Ali Gaga."

Aziraphale made a face.

"I know," said Crowley. 

"Well," said Aziraphale, "Ali Gaga. May his memory be a blessing. Can we go back out?"

"I'm putting him back," said Crowley. 

“Oh, _please_ don't. Think of the clean-up. They know he’s dead, they’ve put him in the bath - though I must say the logic there escapes me. And he was probably rather relieved: I think I heard Miss Bernhardt say he slept in her bed. Which, may I remind you, is apparently a coffin.” 

Crowley ignored her. She trailed her fingers over the spikes on the alligator’s back, and then between his eyes and down his snout. His skin rippled as the miracle went over him. His yellow eyes opened slowly, one set of lids at a time, the scaly outer set lowering and the transparent under-layers flicking sleekly to the side. Then he vanished. 

“Where have you put him?” asked Aziraphale.

“Everglades,” said Crowley, getting to her feet. 

“Lovely there this time of year. Might we stop lurking in the bathroom now?”

“You can, I’m going to go and lurk at home.”

“As in London? Why?”

“I’m not buying the hype on this Sarah woman. Rubbish Hamlet, rubbish alligator husbandry, rubbish party."

“You’re going back to sleep, aren’t you?” Aziraphale said, sounding more accusatory than she'd meant.

“Yup. Hitting the snooze button until 1900.”

“What’s a snooze button?” 

“Don’t worry, it’s for later," Crowley said, looking around as if about to gather her things.

"Crowley, _please_." 

"Please what?" 

"Please don't just… go. Don't abandon me to the actors."

“You’re the one who wanted to come! To the terrible play, and now the terrible party. For the actors! Well, for her, and - "

“Yes, fine, she was rubbish,” said Aziraphale. Then more quietly, “My dear, I was trying to get you out of bed.” 

“Why? I’m fine. This century’s just dull.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Oh, I know you’re enjoying it, you and your little _book club_. All in your little _waistcoats_.”

Aziraphale flinched, then squared her shoulders. “Oh, you’ve been _dying_ to say that, haven’t you?”

Crowley had her hand in her hair. Her face was pinched. “You know I didn’t mean…”

Aziraphale stayed quiet for a moment, but then nodded. “I do.” She looked at Crowley, whose hair was beginning to float free of its pins. “Look, would you stay in Paris, at least? We could go to Montmartre.”

“No, I’m going home.” She paused. “You could come with me,” she said, and then immediately winced and made a noise with too many consonants in it. “Not - ! I mean, obviously not. Heaven forfend.” Aziraphale huffed a dour little laugh. “And not…" Crowley sighed, sounding weary and a little embarrassed. "Not the holy water, either. I'm not trying to get anything from you, angel."

Aziraphale felt a kind of ache suddenly, something heavy pressing at her throat and her forehead. It made her clench her teeth. She put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, which was bony and bare in her evening dress. “Next time,” she said, and Crowley shrugged away from her. Something, the contact or its sudden absence, hurt her, a faint clinging burn that radiated from her fingertips to her shoulder. And then Crowley was gone.

**Paris, 1925**

Aziraphale saw something dark in her periphery and looked up, and then dodged not entirely out of the path of an enormous black automobile. Long-dormant heavenly soldier reflexes got her mostly out of the way, but it clipped her, and it was not an insignificant thing by which to be clipped. She lay on her back in the road for several seconds. Then a pair of spindly legs in an obscenely short skirt hoved into view, and she barely had time to think, _Hang on, I_ know _those ankles_ , before Crowley was bending over her and offering a hand up. 

“Angel!” she said. “Are you all right?”

Aziraphale let Crowley take her hand and pull her to her feet. “I think so,” she said. “Have you rouged your knees?”

Crowley ignored her, circling appraisingly. “You seem fine. Just rumpled and a bit dusty. I’ll sort it.” She traced two fingers down through the air in front of Aziraphale, as if beginning the sign of the cross.

“Don’t,” said Aziraphale, warningly. 

Crowley grinned. “Spectacles, testicles…” 

Aziraphale pursed her lips even as the jittery warmth of the miracle washed over her, settling briefly in her fingertips and the back of her neck. From there she felt it coalesce balm-like where bruises would have come up, heading them off at the pass. The dark dry dirt lifted from her clothes and floated around her for a moment before dropping leadenly to the ground. Her suit looked in better nick than it had in a decade; she thought Crowley might have polished the buttons on her waistcoat. 

“What are you doing in Paris, anyway?” Crowley asked. “Sarah Bernhardt’s dead, and I know for a fact there’s a lovely little creperie not five minutes from your shop. I suspect you put it there.”

“Well, mostly,” said Aziraphale, “I’ve been getting _hit_ by your _car_.”

Crowley had bent down again, and now she stood up. “Oh, you’re _fine_ ,” she said, and handed Aziraphale her miraculously restored puits d'amour and copy of _Tender Buttons_. “And you were apparently crossing the road while reading and eating a little cake, so I’m absolving myself of this one. _And_ , it’s not my car, it’s Gertrude’s. She’s teaching me to drive.”

“It's a pastry. And I’m not sure you’re really _allowed_ to absolve,” said Aziraphale. _Gertrude_ , she was thinking. _Gertrude?_ And then: Gertrude. She was striding out from behind the car. Stout and handsome with close-cropped hair, and, yes, definitely Gertrude Stein. At the sight of her Aziraphale found herself unprecedentedly starstruck. Normally she sort of stumbled on people, really, and they were after all only _people_ , but it suddenly seemed embarrassing to have made a little pilgrimage, which is what she’d been doing in Paris, though she’d gotten somewhat sidetracked. Little cakes. Feeling slightly ridiculous, she vanished the pastry. She wondered about concussion.

“I thought Auntie might have a first aid kit stowed away somewhere, but she did not,” _Gertrude Stein_ was saying. “Though in fact you’re unharmed, aren’t you, madam?”

“She is,” said Crowley, as Aziraphale nodded weakly. "Auntie's the car," she added to Aziraphale, who nodded again.

Gertrude Stein was staring at them. She seemed very calm, considering. After a moment she said, "Do you know each other?"

"Oh, no," said Aziraphale, as Crowley shook her head, but they mustn't have been very convincing because she kept staring, now with an eyebrow raised. Crowley looked over to Aziraphale and shrugged.

"Yeah, er, we sort of do, a bit. This is Miss A. Fell. She has a bookshop in London."

Aziraphale nodded. “I was reading your book, actually, when…”

She held it up, and Gertrude Stein burst out laughing. “Oh, that is gorgeous,” she said. “That is very good indeed. So long as you are truly not hurt. And you two know each other!” She had a warm roaring laugh that put Aziraphale in mind of… well, of Her. It was a little unnerving. 

“Listen, er, Miss Fell,” Crowley said. “Could we give you a lift somewhere? Would that be all right, Gertrude?”

“Certainly,” said Gertrude Stein.

Aziraphale was quite sure the car had only had two seats when it had nearly mowed her down. She gave Crowley a look, and Crowley fiddled with the arm of her sunglasses. After a moment, during which Aziraphale decidedly did not agree to a lift, Crowley said, “You must admit it would drastically lower the odds of me hitting you again.” 

"And I would be driving, naturally," Gertrude Stein put in helpfully. She still seemed amused by both of them, though she had just fixed Crowley with a sympathetic look that Aziraphale couldn't entirely work out.

"Oh," she said, feeling somewhat trapped. "Well, I suppose in that case I accept. Thank you."

"You are so very welcome, angel," said Crowley, offering Aziraphale a cherubic little smile. A great shiver of dread went over her.

About ten minutes later, Gertrude Stein turned around to look at Aziraphale in the back seat. She wanted to ask a question. It was not the first time she had done so. They were going very fast. "Was it in London that you met?" she said.

“Oh, no, long before. We’re old friends,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t suppose you could…”

“Eyes front, Gertie,” said Crowley easily. 

She looked back at the road, but not for long. "So how _did_ you meet?” she asked, making eye contact.

“Er, garden,” said Aziraphale. “Public garden, that is, we weren’t just both trespassing. Or actually, were you? I've never been entirely sure,” she said to the back of Crowley’s head. Her hair was bobbed, cut into a V at the nape. Crowley shrugged. “Hm. So, well, public garden, admiring the trees, people-watching, and then it started storming something dreadful, and I offered her my umbrella.” Here Gertrude Stein turned around again to give her an approving look, an action about which she had rather mixed feelings. “My hotel’s just coming up,” she said, which was not at all true. None of the streets down which they had been speeding were familiar. 

“Oh,” said, er, Gertrude, maybe, “but I had hoped you would come to dinner. It strikes me as a waste to not dine out on this.” 

“Erm, well...” said Crowley.

“I think perhaps…” said Aziraphale, at the same time.

“You English!” said Gertrude… Stein, and started to laugh again. Objectively it was an excellent laugh. It made Aziraphale shiver. 

“Look,” said Crowley, after a pause. “I’m knackered, actually, and I really can’t recommend Miss Fell highly enough as a dinner guest in her own right, so you can just drop me off here-ish. If you’re amenable?” She twisted around to look at Aziraphale.

“I am, yes, of course,” she said, panicking slightly. They pulled over a few minutes later. Aziraphale's left hand felt raw with how she wanted to grab Crowley's thin bare arm and make her stay, make her come to dinner, make her guard Aziraphale from that great ringing laugh. But then Crowley was waving cheerily through the window, and she was waving back.

**Regent’s Park, London, Six Years Ago**

“You know, they do let women be gardeners,” Crowley said. They were in Brother Francis’s cottage with a bottle of Château Margaux. Both of them were still in costume, though Aziraphale had set aside the hat and the teeth, and Crowley had taken off her sensible heels and miracled away her awful wool tights. “You could’ve been Sister Frances," she continued. "Maybe done the whole nun thing again.”

“And been what, a nun-slash-gardener? Commuted from the convent? Besides, I thought the boy might respond better to a male role model,” said Aziraphale.

“Yeah, yeah. Any excuse for a stick-on mutton-chop.”

“Oh, they’re not stick-on.”

Crowley was impressed. She reached out to pull on one and Aziraphale batted her hand away. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s not as if you had to be some sort of Hebridean dominatrix, and yet here we are.”

“It’s not for me to question the muse, dearie,” said Crowley, en brogue, and Aziraphale rolled her eyes.

“D’you know,” said Aziraphale, after a minute or so of silence, “I _hated_ being a nun. Every time.”

“The food, was it?” said Crowley.

“Mm. And all the _activities_. And honestly, it was always rather galling being bossed about by,” she grimaced, " _priests_.” 

_Christ on a bike,_ thought Crowley, taking a long drink, _I really thought she was going to say “the mother superior” just then, and then where would we be?_ She cast about desperately for a response that would convey profound fellow-feeling but not land them anywhere scary. “Yeah,” she said. Aziraphale didn’t react. She was staring into her glass, brow furrowed. Crowley waited a while. “Angel,” she said eventually, “say ‘dominatrix’ again.” 

“Dominatrix,” said Aziraphale automatically, and then pulled a face.

“See,” Crowley said. “You’re an excellent nun, deep down. Look at your little face.” She pointed at Aziraphale’s little face.

Aziraphale snorted. “You clearly don’t know anything about nuns,” she said, with the beginnings of her small-mouth smile. 

“Well, my bonny lad,” Crowley said, topping up their drinks, “enlighten me.”

**Soho, London, The Sixth Week of the Rest of Their Lives**

“Crowley! Come here, would you?” Crowley was near the shop window, trying to bully some violets into growing indoors. Aziraphale was reading behind the till. “I want to show you something,” she said, once Crowley was standing in front of her.

" _The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf_ ,” Crowley read, stooping a little to look at the cover of Aziraphale’s book. “Is that not a bit weird, given that the three of you…?”

“Oh, we _didn’t_ ,” said Aziraphale. “That was just you being silly.”

“You did, a bit.”

“Yes, all right, we did, a bit. And it is, a bit. Weird, I mean. But I wanted to show you something. It reminded me of you.”

Crowley walked behind her chair and bent to look over her shoulder. Aziraphale pointed and she read aloud. “‘I like your energy. I love your legs. I long to see you.’ You love my legs?” She was audibly grinning.

“Darling, I _love_ your legs,” said Aziraphale. “I was ever so pleased about women’s lib - "

“ _Ever_ so pleased?”

“Ever so pleased. Because I thought, _Oh, at last, blessed relief from the onslaught of miniature skirts._ But obviously that didn’t pan out.”

“Wiled your thwarts, did I?”

“With your trousers, yes.”

“I was ever so pleased about women’s lib, too, actually. Even had a go at the whole bra-burning lark, but then, you know, demonic underwear. Impervious to flame.”

“Is it _really_?”

“ _No_ , angel.” She pressed her nose into Aziraphale’s neck. “I like your new cologne.” Aziraphale smiled and curved her hand around the back of Crowley’s head. “I have to get back to the plants. Who _hate_ my energy,” Crowley said, extricating herself. “And possibly my legs.” She picked up Aziraphale's left hand and kissed it, then went back to terrorising the violets. 

**Soho, London, Still the Sixth Week of the Rest of Their Lives**

A few seconds later Crowley turned back around. "Aziraphale," she said, eyes bright, warm laughter in her voice, "are you reading that to see if they've mentioned you?" 

"Of course not," said Aziraphale, affronted.

Crowley was smiling, eyebrows raised. "You can't lie to me, angel. I'm not one of your bosses," she said, not letting Aziraphale avoid her eye.

"That I will concede," said Aziraphale, and then gave up. "Yes, fine, I may have been.” Her cheeks felt hot. The plants were laughing at her, not unkindly. Crowley let them. 


	2. Perfectly Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing scene - Anathema gets a lift.

Anathema had been more than a little relieved to look up out of the ditch and see two women peering worriedly down at her, though it had still rankled a bit when the one in the bow tie had tutted maternally at her about young women out alone on dark nights. She'd considered mentioning the bread knife. But she hadn't, and now they were giving her a lift, and she wasn't at all sure about them. First the one in the bow tie had somehow fixed her bike so thoroughly it had gears and a little saddlebag, which she still couldn't work out, and now the one in the sunglasses had said, ostensibly unprompted, "Look, just give it a rest, would you?"

"Give what a rest?" said the one in the bow tie, reasonably.

"I can _feel_ you being too virtuous to bring up Paris. It's distracting."

"I didn't say a _word_ ," protested Bow Tie, sounding put-upon. Then after a few seconds, sounding more so, "Though I am beginning to wonder if the young lady and I ought to be seeking out fellow survivors. Perhaps we might form some sort of peer support network."

Sunglasses made an indignant noise. "Fellow survivors?!"

"No? You made a clean go of the rest of them, did you?" 

"Would you stop being so dramatic? It was only ever you. Well, and now her. And you were both _fine_ , and honestly, neither of you were exactly road safety exemplars yourselves. So." 

"Oh, yes, you're quite right. I'm sure we're both terribly sorry for our carelessness. I mean, hitting your poor car like that, awfully rude, really." She was being sarcastic, Anathema was sure, but her voice didn't really seem calibrated for it.

"It wasn't my car," said Sunglasses mulishly, and Anathema had the distinct sense that Bow Tie was rolling her eyes.

"Erm," said Anathema, after several tense seconds of silence. _Mum and dad are fighting_ , she thought, suppressing a nervous laugh. 

Bow Tie twisted around to look at her. "Yes, dear?" she said. 

"You can drop me off here." They were on the outskirts of Tadfield.

Sunglasses seemed to snap out of her irritation. She stopped the car. "Is there a hospital around here? Run by nuns?" she asked.

"Nuns? No. There's Tadfield Manor, that sort of looks like a hospital. I'm not sure what they do there." 

"Divine planning," Sunglasses muttered grimly. 

Anathema felt a rush of cold air. Bow Tie had got the car door open, and now she was bowing butler-ishly as she waited for Anathema to get out. Anathema automatically adopted a sort of haughty posture as she gathered her things, uncertain of the protocol for being bowed at by middle-aged women. Sunglasses got out at the same time she did and went to stand proprietorially behind Bow Tie. Then they both escorted her over to her bike, which was unstrapped and leaning against a fence, though she was sure neither of them had gone round to the back of the car.

“Well, young lady,” said Bow Tie when they were gathered in front of the bike. “I hope you've been thoroughly put off late-night cycling trips. It really isn't safe.”

Anathema scowled. "I have a bread knife, you know. Somewhere."

Bow Tie brightened at this. "Oh, good," she said. "Or, well, better than nothing."

Sunglasses snorted. "You reckon she'd do better with a _flaming_ bread knife?" she said, and Bow Tie pursed her lips. 

Anathema was unusually good at taking the nonsensical in stride, but even her head was starting to hurt. She tried to ignore the two women, but then she reached for her bike and found herself overcome. She wheeled it around and faced them. “The _gears_ ,” she said beseechingly.

Sunglasses raised her eyebrows at Bow Tie, went mock-solemn. "Mi Shebeirach - " she started, and then Bow Tie glared and held up a warning finger and she obediently shut up, though she still looked smirky. 

"I got carried away," Bow Tie muttered, sounding equal parts chagrined and stroppy.

Sunglasses looked over to Anathema. “Just… don’t worry about it,” she said, and Anathema found that she wasn’t. Then Sunglasses got distracted by the luggage rack; she glowered in turn at it and at Bow Tie. “Tartan straps?” she said.

"Tartan is stylish," protested Bow Tie.

"You are _such_ a stereotype," said Sunglasses fondly, and Anathema frowned. _Hang on_ , she thought. Sunglasses looked at her again. “Well, goodnight, miss,” she said, somewhat coolly, and strode over to the passenger side door to hold it open. “Get _in_ , angel,” she said, gesturing, and Bow Tie huffed and began to make her way over. _Right, of course_ , thought Anathema. _I mean, bow tie. Well, that explains about the bike, at least._

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The section titled 'Mytilene, Lesbos, 602 BCE' is working from the assumption that Sappho was born around 630 BCE and exiled around 600 BCE.  
> 2\. Bilgamesh is the Sumerian spelling of Gilgamesh, they don't just both have a really specific speech impediment.  
> 3\. Please don't take the oyster-biting thing too literally.


End file.
